In June 2020 Adam was chatting to Shirley David and was asking whether there were any deaf churches in the area. Shirley said there used to be a church in the area years ago but this had closed down and she had been praying along with others for a new deaf church to start.

On 2nd July 2020 we launched Deaf church and we had our first meeting on 2nd August 2020. We had to meet online as Covid restrictions were in place. 10 of us met together on Zoom. Shirley interpreted the service and Sheryll provided remote captioning. We used YouTube videos for worship.

On 6th June 2021 we were finally able to meet in person. Penuel Baptist Church in Carmarthen was our first home. It was great to meet people we had only met online before.

On 5th December 2021 we moved to Bethel Church in Carmarthen where we still meet.

In December 2021 Adam, Maria and Lauren were guest speakers on BBC radio Wales ‘all things considered’. The title of the programme was ‘We hear with our hearts’ and talked about challenges deaf people face in church.

During our services we encourage everyone to take part, this includes signing, worship, reading from the Bible, giving testimonies, speaking or helping out with hospitality.

We have been blessed to have Shirley and Misha who are qualified in BSL and Sheryll who is a professional Speech to Text reporter helping us with translating the service so that it is assessable to everyone who signs or for those who don’t sign but can read text.

It has been great to reach out to people from all over South Wales and to have visitors from other parts of the UK as well.